Between the World Cup and Me GRANT FARRED ENTRE NOUS GRANT Between the ENTRE NOUS World Cup and Me FARRED Duke university Press Durham and London 2019 © 2019 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-fre e paper ∞ Designed by Matthew Tauch Typeset in Warnock Pro by Copperline Books Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Farred, Grant, author. Title: Entre nous : between the World Cup and me / Grant Farred. Description: Durham : Duke University Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2018044273 (print) | lccn 2018054839 (ebook) isbn 9781478005551 (ebook) isbn 9781478004097 (hardcover : alk. paper) isbn 9781478004707 (pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: lcsh: World Cup (Soccer) | Farred, Grant. | Messi, Lionel, 1987– | Suârez, Luis, 1987– | Tabârez, Oscar Washington, 1947—Influence. | Soccer players. | Sports— Philosophy. | Soccer—Social aspects. | Soccer coaches. Classification: lcc gv943.49 (ebook) | lcc gv943.49 .F38 2019 (print) | DDc 796.3340922 [B] —dc23 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018044273 Cover art: Soccer pitch with center circle. Photo by daitoZen/Getty. Por Juanita: Gracias, mi amor CONTENTS Preface ix Acknowledgments xxv INTRODUCTION | 1 Entre- Nous: Between the World and Me CHAPTER ONE | 29 A Condemned Man: Between the Nation and the Autonomista INTERLUDE | 97 “Nog Lansur!” CHAPTER TWO | 163 The Shame of Loving the Condemned: The Philosophy of Óscar Washington Tabárez POSTSCRIPT | 219 Notes 225 Bibliography 251 Index 253 PREFACE In all beginnings dwells a magic force — herman hesse, “Stages” Martin Heidegger knew nothing about Mitsein. Martin Heidegger knew nothing about Mitsein because he never had the chance to see Lionel Messi, Football Club Barcelona’s star player, “being- with” his fans after a miraculous, come- from- behind Champions League victory in 2017. Barça — as football fans the world over refer to the Barcelona team — had just emerged triumphant from its quarterfinal clash against Paris Saint- Germain (Psg) on Barça’s home ground. A philosopher, a double World Cup winner: a not- so motley cast of characters. The Barça- Psg match will be dealt with, at some length, shortly, but for now it is Martin Heidegger who demands our attention. After all, to claim that Heidegger knows nothing about Mitsein is little short of preposterous, a declaration that is philosophically unsustainable. No one, we can assert with absolute confidence, knows more about Mitsein than Heidegger. But . let us tarry with the declaration a moment longer. Martin Heidegger, who in his boyhood days was a “useful left wing” in Meßkirch, his home town, and in his last years reportedly followed European football (Fußball to Hei- degger) keenly, knew nothing about Mitsein. Heidegger knew nothing about Mitsein because, unfortunately for him, he died more than a decade before Leo Messi was even born. In his final years Heidegger was (unsurprisingly, given his reputation for discipline) enamored of his countryman, the imperious Franz Beckenbauer. Nicknamed “Der Kaiser,” Beckenbauer commanded respect from teammates, opponents and fans alike. In 1974 Beckenbauer captained the West German team to World Cup victory. On home soil, no less, with a 2 – 1 win over the Netherlands in West Berlin. In 1990, as manager of the last divided German team to play in a World Cup, Beckenbauer coached West Germany to victory. On a train ride one day, Heidegger, who was “full of admiration for [Becken- bauer’s] delicate ball control,” according to his biographer, Rüdiger Safranski, “actually tried to demonstrate some of Beckenbauer’s finesses to his astonished interlocutor,” who happened to be the “director of the Freiburg theater.”1 One can only imagine it. The now venerable philosopher, in his declin- ing years, trying, as the keen Meßkirch amateur left- winger he’d once been, to make like Beckenbauer. On a moving train, showing no appetite for talk of the theater or literature, there, for all the world to see: Martin Heidegger, footballer. Martin Heidegger, trying to imitate Der Kaiser’s football skills. The philosopher, an outdoors type (he liked to hike and he was no mean skier), exhibiting, in a moving train, his best football moves. The philosopher giving us a glimpse of what the philosopher as footballer looks like. The old philoso- pher retrieving, from gilded memory, the young footballer he once was. The old philosopher recovering, if only for a moment, the footballer in him. The footballer he imagined himself to have been. Albert Camus was a keen ama- teur goalkeeper. Jacques Derrida loved playing the game as a boy in El Biar, the Algiers neighborhood in which he grew up. And how could we forget Jean- Paul Sartre’s insightful analysis of the game: “In football everything is complicated by the presence of the opposite team.” What legendary coach has not arrived at exactly the same conclusion? Are all philosophers nothing but insufficiently talented footballers or underemployed color commentators? Zu sein wie. In the case of Heidegger’s Mitsein, then, what we encounter is nothing other than the philosopher’s (true; truest) desire: to be- with a great footballer. Hei- degger could not know Mitsein, even with Beckenbauer, because he was (physi- cally) too far removed from Der Kaiser. So he did the best could do: he tried to be- like: zu sein wie. To be- like Beckenbauer. Unlike Messi, at Camp Nou, Barça’s stadium, where all the partisans were free to be- with their idol. As we will see shortly, Messi gave himself freely to them, and they, in their turn, gave themselves utterly to him. Heidegger did not give himself to Beckenbauer. Nor would Beckenbauer ever have imagined the possibility of Mitsein with Heidegger. x | PREFACE Still, Heidegger’s is an admirable desire. Eschewing cultural expectation, Der Kaiser is subsumed into the athletic orbit — the aging body — of the “Mae- stro from Meßkirch.” Zu sein wie, the meeting of the imperious Bavarian body (Beckenbauer) and the towering Baden- Württemberg mind (Heidegger). Zu sein wie, this is what it means to want to be- like the other. To be- like the other across (West) German generations, across vast discrepancies in athletic ability. Zu sein wie is not Mitsein but it is what makes it possible for the amateur left- winger to give himself license, now nearing the end of his life, to believe that he is capable of reenacting the “delicate ball control” of a World Cup— winning captain and coach. In truth, zu sein wie, even more than Mitsein, may be the lifeblood of every amateur footballer, of every football fan: to imagine, for a moment, in a train carriage, on a dusty field, on a busy street, on a mani- cured training complex, no, to believe, with fervor and conviction, in the pos- sibility of being- like your Fußball, football, fútbol heroes. To be- with is, for an instant, for a glorious instant, to be- like. As much as any amateur footballer, a community among whom I number, Martin Heidegger knew zu sein wie as such a dream, knew the dream of zu sein wie as momentary athletic transcen- dence, knew what it meant to dream of supping with the Fußball gods. To correct the terms of this philosophical proposition, then, we can say that while Martin Heidegger knew “nothing” about Mitsein, he knew everything about zu sein wie. And, as such, all amateur and aspiring professional foot- ballers are like, are with, Heidegger. Mitsein. In a footballing sense, as much as a philosophical one, there can be no doubt: Martin Heidegger is as much a master of Mitsein as he is of zu sein wie. The left- wing philosopher. The irony. Martin Heidegger, a philosopher infamous for his involvement — his May 1933 rectoral address (“Die Selbstbehauptung der deutschen Univer- sität” [The Self- Assertion of the German University]) and so on — with the right wing of German politics, started out as a left- winger. Was Heidegger, like Leo Messi, left- footed? One wonders, was he left- footed but right- handed? As for the matter of “delicate ball control,” football fans of a certain generation are more likely to associate this football skill with Messi rather than Becken- bauer. The always- imposing Der Kaiser was no slouch on the ball, and while he possessed impressive football technique, his was not on the order of Messi’s. Football fans would be hard- pressed to name another footballer who has such PREFACE | xi immaculate technical skills, such an array of invention, and such a visionary range of passing skill. But I digress, no doubt because I take too much pleasure at the prospect of an almost octogenarian Martin Heidegger reliving his ball- playing ambi- tions from his Meßkirch youth on a German train, ignoring the invitation to talk high culture. Who among us wouldn’t pay good money to have been able to see that? Imagine what a historic spectacle all the passengers in that train carriage were witness to. They were with Heidegger zu sein wie Beckenbauer while Heidegger was being- with his younger, left- wing self. What a moment of triangulated (West) German zu sein wie und Mitsein. Heidegger, former member of Hitler’s National Socialists (he and Carl Schmitt joined on the same day), enacting a being- like Beckenbauer, a footballer born in September 1945 in the ruins of postwar Munich, rising to lead both his country, West Ger- many, and his club, Bayern München, to footballing glory, a being- like that is, courtesy of Heidegger’s athletic reenactment, extended to all (the passengers in the carriage) and sundry (metonymically, to all of Germany and the world beyond too). Mitsein and zu sein wie, then, as that mode of being that forges a sustain- able, perhaps unbreakable, connection between philosophy, replete with erudi- tion and abstraction, and football, a sport that is so intensely about the body.